SACRIFICIAL 'SUN STONES' UNEARTHED IN DENMARK:

 

Danish sacrificial Sun Stone. Internet image from Pinterest.

Large numbers of engraved stone disks have been unearthed in Denmark.

“Hundreds of unusual discs unearthed in Denmark are revealing clues into how a Stone Age population responded to a devastating volcanic eruption nearly 5,000 years ago, a new study has found. Scientists discovered the first of these small, carved stone artifacts in 1995 at a Neolithic site called Rispebjerg on the island of Bornholm, about 112 miles (180 kilometers) southeast of Copenhagen. Because many of the discs were etched with branching rays emanating from central circles — a recognizable image of the sun — archaeologists named the objects “sun stones,” though some featured motifs resembling plants or rows of crops. Excavations uncovered hundreds more sun stones between 2013 and 2018 at Vasagård, another Neolithic site on the island about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) northwest of Rispebjerg. Most of the Vasagård sun stones were made of local shale. They were placed in ditches around the same time and were seemingly buried on purpose, but scientists didn’t know why.” (Weisberger 2025)

Danish sacrificial Sun Stone. Internet image, public domain. 

Some of the engravings show rows of lines and/or dots and perhaps represent crops in a field. Others have spiderweb-like designs, while others seem to have engravings representing the sun on them.

“A total of 614 crafted plaques and plaque fragments carrying a variety of decorative motifs were found during excavations at Vasagård West between 2013 and 2018. The vast majority derive from the ditches of the causewayed enclosure, though a few were found in postholes belonging to one of the timber circles and some come from a cultural layer deposited in a shallow depression just next to the causewayed enclosure. In the ditches, the engraved stones are delimited to a specific recurring layer. The stratigraphy, comparable between ditches, indicates a sealing of the lower layers of the ditches by a stone pavement dated by pottery inclusions to c. 3000–2900 BC. Most engraved stones were found in the lower section of the darker infilling layer that sits on top of the pavement (layer 2). This infill is dated by ceramic typology to the local Vasagård phase of the late Funnel Beaker culture, c. 2900–2800 BC.” (Iversen et al. 2025)

Danish sacrificial Sun Stones. Internet image, public domain. 

The original interpretation of this speculated that it had something to do with fertility rites for the crops in their fields (falling back on the old definition of anything we don’t fully understand as ‘ceremonial’). However, the timing of the burial of the stones now has been found to coincide with a period of climatic cooling caused by volcanism. “Recently, researchers fit together clues hinting at a motive for the Vasagård burial. They examined sediments from Germany, tree rings from Germany and the western United States, and frost markers in Greenland ice cores, identifying a period of intense climate cooling around 2900 BC — the time of the sun stones’ burial. Quantities of sulfate in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica dating to about 2910 BC suggested that this cooling followed a volcanic eruption, scientists reported January 16 in the journal Antiquity. ‘It was a major eruption of a great magnitude,’ comparable to the well-documented eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 43 BC that cooled the climate by about 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius), said lead study author Rune Iversen, an archaeologist and an associate professor at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen. Okmok’s eruption, one of the largest of the past 2,500 years, triggered more than two years of unusual cold and erratic weather that decimated crops across the Mediterranean, leading to famine and disease. The aftermath was so devastating that it is thought to have hastened the fall of the Roman Republic and the subsequent rise of the Roman Empire, another team of scientists reported in 2020. Though little is known about the 2900 BC eruption, it is thought to have ushered in similar hardship, suffering and death in Neolithic Denmark, Iversen told CNN.” (Weisberger 2025)

The original interpretation of this speculated that it had something to do with fertility rites for the crops in their fields (falling back on the old definition of anything we don’t fully understand as ‘ceremonial’). However, the timing of the burial of the stones now has been found to coincide with a period of climatic cooling caused by volcanism. “Recently, researchers fit together clues hinting at a motive for the Vasagård burial. They examined sediments from Germany, tree rings from Germany and the western United States, and frost markers in Greenland ice cores, identifying a period of intense climate cooling around 2900 BC — the time of the sun stones’ burial. Quantities of sulfate in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica dating to about 2910 BC suggested that this cooling followed a volcanic eruption, scientists reported January 16 in the journal Antiquity. ‘It was a major eruption of a great magnitude,’ comparable to the well-documented eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 43 BC that cooled the climate by about 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius), said lead study author Rune Iversen, an archaeologist and an associate professor at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen. Okmok’s eruption, one of the largest of the past 2,500 years, triggered more than two years of unusual cold and erratic weather that decimated crops across the Mediterranean, leading to famine and disease. The aftermath was so devastating that it is thought to have hastened the fall of the Roman Republic and the subsequent rise of the Roman Empire, another team of scientists reported in 2020. Though little is known about the 2900 BC eruption, it is thought to have ushered in similar hardship, suffering and death in Neolithic Denmark, Iversen told CNN.” (Weisberger 2025)

Danish sacrificial Sun Stone. Internet image, public domain. 

A climate event of the magnitude speculated would have caused major crop failures and famine. “A cooling event comparable to the one caused by the 43 BC eruption took place a few years before or after 2900 BC and coincided with the ritual deposition of the engraved stones. It is possible that this 2900 BC cooling event also had wider economic and social consequences for the people living in southern Scandinavia at the time, as it coincides with the beginning of the final Funnel Beaker phase. This phase is characterised by substantial changes in material break with the classic Funnel Beaker tradition, the cessation of megalithic tomb building and the formation of new networks and influences from the marine oriented Scandinavian Pitted Ware culture, which also affected Bornholm.” (Iversen et al. 2025) So, the fact that the climate dangerously cooled and that at the same time hundreds of these stones were buried does not really seem much like a coincidence.

The authors have made a number of conclusions about the subjects of the engraving on the stones. “The Vasagård engraved stones present miniature art with motifs connected to the sun and to the growth of cultivated plants. Deposition occurred on a single or a few successive occasions, potentially in response to one or more climatic cooling events around 2900 BC precipitated by a volcanic eruption. These depositions could have been made during a time of stress with the purpose of bringing back the sun and re-establishing agricultural production. They could also have been made when the climate crisis was over, as an act of celebration for the return of the sun. At Vasagård the deposition of the engraved stones correlates with a change from activities centered on the causewayed enclosure to new rituals taking place in small, circular cult houses inside wooden palisades. The effects of the climate crisis may have resulted in increased competition and conflicts at a time when the classical Funnel Beaker tradition was dissolving and was soon to be followed by new cultural changes resulting from migrations impacting eastern, central and northern Europe and beyond.” (Iversen et al. 2025)

Now I certainly do not want to pick a fight with Iversen et al., but I have to ask how burying something underground makes it a sacrifice to the sun. The sun is up overhead in the sky, not underground. It would be my assumption that ancient Scandinavians associated the sky with their gods, and thus the focus of their religious beliefs would have been upward, but I will just have to accept that I do not share (or understand) their beliefs. I would also bet that a large portion of the population back then were in denial that the climate would or could change, much like the percentage of our fellow citizens who deny climate change in our time. If we do not learn from history we may be forced to repeat it. History may not repeat itself, but it surely rhymes.

NOTE 1: My closing line above is a paraphrasing of a quotation usually credited to Theodore Reik or Mark Twain.

NOTE 2: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Iversen, Rune et al., 2025, Sun stones and the darkened sun: Neolithic miniature art from the island of Bornholm, Denmark, 16 January 2025, Published online by Cambridge University Press, https://www.cambridge.org/cord/journals/antiquity. Accessed online 16 May 2025.

Weisberger, Mindy, 2025, Neolithic people in Denmark sacrificed ‘sun stones’ after climate cataclysm, scientists say, 23 January 2025, CNN online, https://edition.cnn.com. Accessed online 16 May 2025.

WAS HACHURE SEEN AS THE COLOR BLUE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST?

 

Ancestral Pueblo olla with hachure infill in the design. Internet image, public domain.

The origin of the idea that hachure, closely spaced, parallel thin lines, used to fill a space might be intended to symbolize the color blue was credited to J. J. Brody by Stephen Plog (2003). “One of the common design characteristics on black-on-white pottery from the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the northern American Southwest is the use of thin, parallel lines (hachure) to fill the interior of bands, triangles, This essay explores a proposal offered by Jerry Brody that hachure was a symbol for the color blue-is examined by exploring colors and color patterns used to decorate nonceramic material from the of northwestern New Mexico. His proposal is supported and the implications of this conclusion for future studies of this nature are discussed.” (Plog 2003:1) This suggestion, originally applied to the decoration of pottery, was because while the indigenous potters had a full range of black, white, reds and yellow based upon natural pigments, there was no technology at that time that could give them blue or green colors on finished pots. But Plog had also compared the use of hachure on pottery to other, non-pottery, painted artifacts and decided that hachure was used on pottery designs in the same manner that blue paint was used on other media.

Ancestral Pueblo olla with hachure infill in the design. Internet image, public domain.

Sarah Klassen and Will Russel, in 2019, explained it in a paper on color usage in Mimbres pottery. “In the 1970s, American art historian Jerry “J.J.” Brody speculated that 11th- and 12th-century potters in the Chaco region of what is today New Mexico used black hachure—closely spaced, parallel lines—on a white background as a proxy for the color blue-green. The Chaco culture was centered on Chaco Canyon, but it spanned the Four Corners area of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Brody had noticed some striking similarities between black-on-white designs on pottery and more colorful designs in other media, such as stone mosaics and painted boards, where color was easier to apply and longer-lasting. The designs were similar, but where the mosaics had turquoise, the pottery had hachure. In 2003, archaeologist Stephen Plog of the University of Virginia tested this idea, comparing the use of hachure on pots to the use of blue-green on more than 50 objects featuring color. His findings supported Brody’s idea: Hachure seemed to represent turquoise.” (Klassen and Russell 2019:3)

Interestingly, Will G. Russell, Sarah Klassen and Katherine Salazar, having done their own comparative study, had written in 2017 that “Our observations do not support the hypothesis that Mimbres hachure acted as a proxy for blue-green. If such an association did exist, it would make little sense for potters to use hachure interchangeably with any color other than blue-green. That is, if hachure did represent blue-green, it follows that it would either stand alone, or be stylistically interchangeable with blue-green. Although blue-green pigment would not have stayed blue-green after firing, it could have been added as fugitive paint. Thus, if our comparison suggests any correlation between Mimbres hachure and a particular color, that color is either brown (objective) or yellow (subjective).” (Russell, Klassen and Salazar 2017:115) So, their interpretation, although their conclusions differ from Brody and Plog, also find hachure to represent a color.

Barrier Canyon Style anthropomorph, Harvest Scene, Maze Overlook, Canyonlands, San Juan County, Utah. Photograph by Don I. Campbell, 1 May 1983.

We also need to keep in mind that what may have applied to art produced by the Mimbres Culture would not necessarily apply to the other prehistoric cultures of the American Southwest. As we have seen, however, Brody and Plog had come to the conclusion that for prehistoric Puebloan (Anasazi) peoples the use of hachure, in Chaco Canyon and elsewhere, stood for the color blue. Indeed, Plog had focused his study on Chacoan pottery.

Barrier Canyon Style anthropomorph, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands, Wayne County, Utah Photograph Don I. Campbell, 16 May 1984.

So what does all this talk about pottery have to do with rock art? Well, we find some examples of hachure or hachure-like texturing in rock art. Also we need to remember that colors pretty much always had major spiritual significance to indigenous peoples.

Barrier Canyon Style anthropomorphs, Photograph by Colin D. Young.  

“Most of the Pueblos associate north with yellow, west with blue, south with red, and east with white. Below, or the underworld is generally associated with black or dark, while the zenith, or the world above, is variably represented by black, brown, yellow or multiple colors.” (Munson 2020:13) So, the colors on a pot, or the color of the paint used to make a pictograph may have carried extra meaning associated with the spiritual implications of the color. Based on the seeming ubiquity of these color codes in the American Southwest, I am going to assume that the peoples on the northern periphery, first Barrier Canyon and later Fremont, also gave colors of paint a spiritual content, I just have no way of knowing for sure what those meanings would be.

 

Barrier Canyon Style anthropomorph, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands, Wayne County, Utah Photograph James Q. Jacobs.

Most painted rock art is in various shades of natural ochers although there are rare examples of blue and green. In Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) figures (and presumably Fremont Culture figures as well) Dr. James Farmer (2019) associated vertical hachure within the silhouette of the figure as representing rain. One of the elements of his “BCS ‘Thunderstorm’ Iconographic Complex” is falling rain shown on an anthropomorph as closely spaced vertical lines – hachure? Although painted with red paint, he says they represent falling rain, and rain is water and water is associated with blue. What if those hachure rain lines in Barrier Canyon anthropomorphs represent blue rain? What if the artists who painted the figures used closely spaced red lines (hachure) to represent the color blue on the figures?

 

I don’t think I could prove this even if I wanted to, and I am not convinced even now, but isn’t it an interesting possibility?

 

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

 

 

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

 

Farmer, James, Dr., 2019, Southwestern Rock Art and the Mesoamerican Connection, 18 April 2019, Colorado Rock Art Association online webinar.

 

Klassen, Sarah, and Will Russell, 2019, The Hidden Color Code in Mimbres Pottery, 14 November 2019, https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/mimbres-pottery-color/.

Accessed online 6 March 2025.

 

Munson, Marit K., and Kelley Hays-Gilpin, editors, 2020, Color in the Ancestral Pueblo Southwest, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT.

 

Plog, Stephen, 2003, Exploring the Ubiquitous Through the Unusual: Color Symbolism in Pueblo Black on White Pottery, October 2003, American Antiquity, Volume 68 (4), pp. 665-695. Accessed online at JSTOR, 7 March 2025.

 

Russell, Will G., Sarah Klassen and Katherine Salazar, 2017, Lines of Communication: Mimbres Hachure and Concepts of Color, American Antiquity 83 (1), 2018, pp. 109-127. Accessed online at Researchgate, 7 March 2025.

 

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

 

Brody, J. J., 1991, Anasazi and Pueblo Painting, A School of American Research Book, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.